Transcript

SZ: What drew you to Zen and where and when did you start your practice?

BK: I could say it was the The Tassajara Bread Book, or a life crisis, or Ram Dass, Raj Neesh, Alan Watts, my husband, Gestalt therapy (i.e. Fritz Perls, et al). I could say it was wondering whether practice would help me get beyond the pent up anger, the trigger points, and charged reactivity that reading, the arts, therapy, and all the other things hadn’t quite touched. Or I could say it was being in a time in my life when a major act seemed appropriate—and what is more major than a monastic or residential lifestyle in which you renounce career in place of a community of seekers such as yourself? Or, or, or…In 1985 my husband Jim Jordan and I left our respective career process, our kids then grown, and we dove in to Zen practice at SFZC, living and working there for about 15 years.

SZ. You were ordained a priest by Tenshin Reb Anderson-roshi and received Dharma transmission from Zenkei Blanche Hartman-roshi, and also served the San Francisco Zen Center in several capacities—including as President. What do you think the success behind SFZC has always been? It is easily the most well-known, if not largest, Soto Zen institution present in the West.

BK: I think SFZC had a number of lucky things happen to it at the right times. As we know, conditions and responses are non-linear. Firstly, I think Suzuki Roshi being supported by Japan for the first few years allowed him to do dharma teaching as it made sense to him. It was the perfect time and place and people came. I think a number of entrepreneurial people were part of the first waves, and Richard Baker was first among many of those. Because of this—buildings, land, and exciting new-thought kinds of people were able to come together financially and spiritually. The creativity that flowed was remarkable within a remarkable time.

Many of the problems at SFZC came with Suzuki Roshi’s early death. But I also think that SFZC found a good balance between westernizing and staying true to tradition, because they had to stand on their own “feet” without the mythic teacher. With the buildings, the businesses, and innocent idealism of the early practitioners, they were able to support residents, householders, weekenders, teachers and explorers. No place today has the kind of resources that the early SFZC serious students were able to amass with Suzuki Roshi’s wonderful teaching—a teaching which gave depth and tradition to the enterprise.

With Richard Baker’s leaving, again, there were some hard times, but in the long run that allowed SFZC to reinvent itself. It brought in new blood that was older, and more worldly-experienced, than some of the early founding students. The new and the old met and grew with and from one another. Tassajara‘s previous incarnation as a resort was also helpful with its cloistered winters and retreat center summers. This is my first set of thoughts on this (though I’ve thought about it over the years)—causes and conditions, dependent co-origination and, of course, a wonderful practice that is well balanced between lay and priest, householder and “monk”, American and Japanese, tradition and innovation.

SZ: You mention that Baker’s departure was a particularly tough time for the community. Do you think Baker was too young and inexperienced to have assumed leadership of the community when he did? What was it like in 1985 when you arrived there?

BK: My “memories” are from coming shortly after Baker Roshi left and hearing people over many years, seeing the way things were when I arrived and how we as a community grew in the years after people calmed down from the trauma. In 1985 people like my spouse and myself, who had lived in the world, had vocations and raised children, were well educated, brought synthesis between the arts and psychology and Zen and were welcomed and found a good home – as I said the joy and value was that we had things to teach each other. We weren’t traumatized by the past and were able to offer something of what it had been to be in the 60’s and 70’s in the wider world. Those who were emerging from the years after Suzuki Roshi died had the wisdom of that many years of practice and depth of living in a Zen community to teach us. It was a good mix, I think. Many of us who came in the mid and late 80’s also left after 10 to 15 years and took into the world we’d come from, the experience of monastic and residential Zen training.

To answer your question, yes I do think Richard Baker was too young in the Dharma when he assumed the role of abbot. His mistakes seem to happen to some, whether mature in the Dharma or not. It is hard to lead a group and not fall prey to various forms of power misuse.

SZ: By the fall of 2000 you had accepted invitation from the Austin Zen Center to lead their community and relocated there. What is the Buddhist community like in Austin, Texas and what sort of services do you provide at AZC?

BK: Very similar to those in San Francisco, actually. Austin is the Berkeley of Texas – creative people and highly educated people abound, along with slackers and conservatives. The underlying tone is more Christian and I’ve come to know other religious leaders—something I didn’t do much of in SF. AZC has a guest student program and also has residents. We offer a full weekly zazen program, classes, sesshins, and also have visiting teachers coming from Soto and other backgrounds (Reb, Blanche and also Mu Soeng, Shohaku Okumura and Rinzai teacher, Roko Chayat from Syracuse). We have money problems and internal sangha problems—just like anyplace does. I am retiring and a new head teacher is here: Kosho McCall from SFZC. As time goes on, I think having multiple senior teachers here will be a help. We’ve developed shuso programs, lay practice, lay and priest ordinations, sewing rakusu and kesa, etc. Pretty much I was influenced by my back ground and then learned from other lineage holders in the Soto Zen Buddhist world here in the US.

SZ: The Berkeley of Texas, I like that. You mentioned Shohaku Okumura is a visiting teacher at AZC, and I’ve noticed both you and he had previously given transmission to Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston of the Matsuoka lineage. The way this story has sometimes been presented was that it was a concerted effort to bring Matsuoka’s line into the mainstream of American Soto Zen. Would you say that is an accurate description, or was there more to it than that?

BK: I worked with Michael to bring him “classical” Zen formal training. He spent 3 months as shuso
with us at AZC and came to sesshins for a couple of years and I went to Atlanta to teach (I also had students in a Unitarian/Buddhist group that were there at the time and encouraged them to join the Atlanta Soto Zen Buddhist Center). Shohaku worked with him in other ways and then gave him transmission. I’d say it was to help a teacher who hadn’t been fully trained but had received from his teacher (Matsuoka) permission to teach. It was an opportunity to fulfill the requirements of admission to Soto Zen Buddhist Association and the American Zen Teachers Association and bring him and his sangha into the mainstream of interacting with other Zen teachers. So the Atlanta Soto Zen Center is an interesting combination of Matsuoka, Uchiyama, Suzuki. That is the way I’d describe it.

SZ: I notice that you perform what are termed “commitment ceremonies” at the AZC for same-sex couples. Do you feel that same-sex marriage is the civil rights issue of our time? What are your overall thoughts on this now politically-charged issue?

BK:The issue of our time? I guess it is one of the more radical changes to come along. It matters to me that marriage gets treated in such a way that the legal aspects (rights and priv. vis a vis insurance, death and illness rights, children, etc.) and the religious aspects are separated. For me, if a couple (or even 3 or 4 people) wants to be joined, I see my job as being there to help them make a formal commitment to each other. The legal part isn’t what I am engaged in. So perhaps all my weddings are commitment ceremonies.

Yes, I am 100% supportive of the legalization of gay marriage—as it is the simplest way to address the issue and the way that the majority of gay rights advocates seem to support. I think the civil rights issues of our time continue to be all the same ones: freedom of speech, behavior (non-harming to others), beliefs (not acted out on others), and, even more importantly, the need to address unequal education and the horrid unfairness of poverty in this country and worldwide. We also need to develop the ability to stand diversity, in all its varied guises. Katagiri Roshi once said that the main job of a Zen Teacher is to teach fearlessness—that is the radical work we can all do about these issues.

About Sweeping Zen

Established in 2009 as a grassroots initiative, Sweeping Zen is a digital archive of information on Zen Buddhism. Featuring in-depth interviews, an extensive database of biographies, news, articles, podcasts, teacher blogs, events, directories and more, this site is dedicated to offering the public a range of views in the sphere of Zen Buddhist thought. We are also endeavoring to continue creating lineage charts for all Western Zen lines, doing our own small part in advancing historical documentation on this fabulous import of an ancient tradition. Come on in with a tea or coffee. You're always bound to find something new.

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About Sweeping Zen

Established in 2009 as a grassroots initiative, Sweeping Zen is a digital archive of information on Zen Buddhism. Featuring in-depth interviews, an extensive database of biographies, news, articles, podcasts, teacher blogs, events, directories and more, this site is dedicated to offering the public a range of views in the sphere of Zen Buddhist thought. We are also endeavoring to continue creating lineage charts for all Western Zen lines, doing our own small part in advancing historical documentation on this fabulous import of an ancient tradition. Come on in with a tea or coffee. You're always bound to find something new.

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